Hi I'm Tamara Lackey and on this episode of 'reDefine' I speak with New York photographer Jason Groupp
about how he transitioned from being an assistant shooter to owning his
own studio to building a thriving wedding photography business and
eventually teaching other shooters exactly where to stick it. Check it out
AdoramaTV presents 'The reDefine Show' with Tamara Lackey.
'Hello Jason Groupp. How are you?'
'I'm wonderful how are you?'
'Good. Thank you for joining me today. I want to talk to you about your you know kind of
iconic thing for photography having a really nice studio in New York City, I've
been there a couple of times for some pretty cool events and how did it all
get started for you, like, in terms of living the dream?'
'I was really lucky getting that space.
I had been working for another studio below where I am now and
the building that we're in is kind of this artist loft space and the people
who own the building are very supportive of artists and is one of
those places that was really difficult to get into. You kind of had to know somebody there
and one day there was a little post-it note up on one of the doors it said 'Looking for
Studio' , literally a post-it note, like on a little bulletin board in our
building, and I called the guy, we met, I wrote him a cheque that afternoon.'
'Wow. So, had you known? Were you in the market, or just the opportunity presented itself?'
'In New York it's kind of one of those things
where like you know when the opportunity
presents itself and you've got to do it.' 'And then so I remember this on social media
you doing this big shoot off with Zack Arias, so what was that all about?'
'Well I mean I love challenges.' 'Really? I think I know that about you!'
'And I think it's fun to be competitive with your peers so anytime you can do something like that to
keep yourself going is..
'But what was it exactly? How did it evolve? Because I remember it was big,'
like a lot of people were weighing in
and you guys were sharing shots, it was a contest.'
'Well I think him and I like to kind of jab at each other
you know about lighting and different different kinds
of stuff so, you know, I think I challenged him and it kind of went from there.'
'OK and what was it? What would you guys actually do?'
'So we went out and we picked I think four locations and we got a model.'
'In the city? In New York, yeah.'
'And I had a couple join us and we challenged each
other in different locations so the first location we were only allowed to
take 3 pictures, we had to get the shot in 3 clicks, so that was the first challenge, the second challenge we were
allowed to take as many pictures as we wanted but we'd tape the back of the camera so we couldn't see anything.
'Like a film shoot?' 'Right, so we had all of these challenges
and then we came back to studio worked on our images and then we had like two
hours to get everything together and then we posted it on social media, on our blogs,
Zack posted it on his blog and you know anonymously, all the pictures, so pick the ones that you like.'
'Oh, so nobody knows who they're voting for.'
'Right, so they were voting for, you know, which ones they liked, and you had to choose.'
'And who won?'
'I did.'
'Yeah! Haha!'
'I like to win.'
'Yeah, you like to win. You like to be challenged, you like to win.'
'The funny part with the shot that won was, I used Zack's assistant in the shot, so I think they all
thought that was Zack. Zack's loyal followers were kind of annoyed because I duped them.'
That's very funny. Good, good. And you're really big into OCF?'
'I am. I am.'
'What was that about again?'
'So, I think, with off-camera lighting in general
newer people find it challenging to know where to... like they get 'I know how to work the
camera' and 'how to turn on and off I know what it does.''
'Not just newer people. People have been shooting for a long time if they're not completely versed.'
'That's true, so I like to say I just don't know where to stick it, so I show you where to stick it.'
'And where do people stick it?'
'Where? It doesn't matter where you stick it. You need to stick it somewhere.'
'You need to start someplace by sticking it some place.'
'Yes, yes and then instructionally, are you a fan of a certain technique or another or what?'
'No, no. Keep it really simple. I think people get really bogged down by all the
gear and all the soft boxes and all that stuff is wonderful right we should all
out of it but it's a lot to love them but figure out what works best for you.'
'Yeah kind of just come up with a simple process and just use it repeatedly, I completely concur.'
'Right, and the best way to find out how to do it is to do it.'
'Right, so tell me a little bit about 25 we're going to a clip of it. What is it? How did you make it? What was it for?'
'So just down-and-dirty lighting setups and you know again
showing you where to stick it. Here it is
down-and-dirty here's twenty five unique lighting setups and one of the things
that I found that was really good was when you do these lighting setups to remember
them and kind of have this memory of them so we would give them names, so we
would call like one like McDougal Street or one Chelsea or different things like that.'
'So you can kind of make it muscle memory verses trying to figure it out every time.'
'So if you're working. And it was a great way to work with my assistants as well, to show them the
different lighting things and say we're going to do, you know, that one.'
Perfect, ok we're about to jump into a clip of that before do that, though, can you let
us know where people can find out more about you, social media, see your work?'
'jasongroupp.com'
That's your website, that's your
work. Perfect, ok, we're going to jump to the clip, thank you so much.'
'Thank you.'
Here we are it's the suite at the Hojo in North Bergen, New Jersey with our
heart shaped tub and Elise is on our bridal suite bed and this could
possibly be the worst situation that I could ever imagine myself in. There's mirrors behind there.
There's no lights. Whatever lights we do have in the room, most of them aren't working and so
I surveyed the room and I figured let's make the best of it and let's do what we can so I don't
really want to use a lot of the available lighting in here so I'm still going to stay at a low ISO. I'm going to go to 320
ISO and I'm going to go to aperture priority because I don't really need to worry
about my shutter speed anymore because I know that I want to shoot as wide open as
possible. Blur out whatever I possibly can. So I'm going to go with a 3.2 and
just bang off a quick exposure and see what I get. No flash. I'm going to shoot real close and I'm
down to like an eighth of a second so I know that, let me just get rid of all of it,
so I'm going to go from an eighth. Let's see. Eighth. Stop
would be tenth, fifteenth. I'm going all the way to like a sixteenth of a second and switch
to manual at F 3.2 and I'm still picking up a little bit of ambient light.
It'll just warm it up a little bit. I'll turn my flash light, flash on. Lindsay is shooting
through the sheers, just to kind of diffuse the light a little bit and we'll turn on and good.
Now, there's just a little bit of light coming through, kind of give i.. Back up a little bit off the
sheer, Lindsay, and I'm going to open up a little bit. I've got a 2.8, a sixteenth of a second and we have a but the
beginning of what could be a nice shot, we're going to get up real high, lift up your chin a little bit.
Good! And there we go our first shot, St. Mark's Place, dingy hotel room.
Thank you Jason. Excellent techniques.
And congratulations on your new role as director of WPPI. Join me here next time
on AdoramaTV and don't forget to subscribe to AdoramaTV for all kinds of
amazing content from very teachy photographers.
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